Five Minutes
by ProfessorSpork
Summary: Also known as: Horticulture, Boredom, and the Art of Bedroom Politics. Spoilers for Journey's End. In which the Doctor airs his grievances, and Rose is mostly amused.


Disclaimer: I do not own them!

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To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Doctor loved a good cuddle after sex.

To his complete and utter bafflement, Rose was not the same way.

"Ask me again in five minutes," she'd say, and roll over to do… whatever it was she had to fiddle with on her bedside table that evening. She has a pair of thick rimmed reading glasses for moments like these, which she insists she needs to see and have nothing to do with his own absurd tics. They _are _prescription—he's checked—but only barely.

"Rooooooooose…" he whines, feeling lazy and boneless and rather like a Rose-shaped someone would make the perfect pillow for a quick nap.

"Hold on," she mumbles, tongue poking out in concentration as she scribbles madly into a journal, "I've just got to write this down before I forget—"

She's learned, he thinks, exactly the wrong habits from him. (And he's still never asked how the dimension cannon got built, or just what it is she works on when they're not doing field missions. He likes being surprised by her knowledge, and—if he's being honest—it's rather a turn-on every time he discovers she knows something he doesn't. There are depths to Rose Tyler he hasn't even approached yet, and _that _is quite adventure enough for him.)

(Or at least, it _would _be, if she'd stop tinkering and pay him some proper attention.)

He flops uselessly into the bed, causing the mattress to bounce, and she caresses his ankle with her foot in a distracted, "there, there" kind of gesture.

"It's not you," she's reassured him, time and again. "I was the same exact way with Mickey. He called it _afterglow anxiety. _He'd curl up in a lump and I'd have to get up and… I dunno, do jumping jacks or something, to get rid of all the extra energy—" and it's usually around this point that he kisses her, less because he wants her and more just to shut her up. Despite his inherently inquisitive nature, her sex life with Mickey Smith is really _not _something about which he requires intimate knowledge.

He's less sleepy by the second, his annoyance fueling him.

"I can think of better uses for all that energy than your science experiments," he grouses, crossing his arms in a huff. It's plants, currently—they're trying out an alien growth agent on varieties of flora, with the hope that they can use it on grains to accelerate crop production in non-industrialized nations. Their flat looks like a menagerie, every free surface covered in vegetation at varying development stages.

She whips her head back to look at him curiously, her spectacles sliding down her nose. "Yeah?" she asks, and he's surprised—as he always is, still unfamiliar with his half-human body—by just what it is she does to him, without even trying at all.

"Oh, yes," he assures her, with a rakish smile.

She gives him a once-over, taking him in. "You're sure you're not too tired?" she asks, but there's a hint of tongue in her teeth.

The gall of her, to tease him like that.

"Rose _Tyler,_" he squeaks indignantly, propping himself up by the elbows. "Are you insinuating that I lack the energy to satisfy you whenever I deem it necessary? Especially," he notes, looking at the vials she's been examining in distaste, "at a time when you so clearly need my loving attention?"

"Oh, for—it's not _you, _Doctor. For the _last time: _I don't get sleepy. I never have. It has nothing to do with who I'm with; it's just how my body works."

"The others simply weren't trying hard enough," he says, and yanks her by the wrist. "C'mere."

"What, now?"

"_Yes, _now! You're the one so keen on doing experiments. So now we're trying one of my own. I promise, it's much more fun than your… than your… _plants._"

Rolling her eyes, she flips herself over and straddles him. "Happy now?" she sighs, exasperated, but she can't quite mask the devilish gleam in her eye.

He hooks a leg around hers and twists, trapping her beneath him as she lets out a surprised squeal. Pinning her arms to the bed, he grins hungrily. "Ask me again in five minutes."


End file.
